All posts by Isabeau Iqbal

Portfolios

PD activities,

Portfolio

My career as an educational developer began when I was hired for a 4-month contract to work on a teaching portfolio initiative at the University of British Columbia’s teaching and learning centre. That project started my interest in portfolios. And though that initiative wrapped up a long time ago, my interest in portfolios has remained alive.

Below are some workshops/webinars I have participated in related to portfolios.

Portfolios

    • Academic Branding: Improving Your Visibility, Network, and Career Opportunities. (February 25, 2015. Webinar offered by Academic Coaching and Writing).
    • WordPress training (ongoing since 2009)
    • ePortfolios for Learning and Assessment web conference (Dr. Trent Batson and Dr.Helen Chen, September 28, 2008)
    • Developing and Evaluating Teaching Portfolios web Conference (Dr. Amy Goodburn, October 26, 2007)
    • Opportunities for Reflection and Community-Building Using Emerging Technologies Presentation by Helen Chen, Stanford University; Friday, March 3, 2006; 1.5 hours)
    • Creating Electronic Portfolios using iWebfolio 3.0 (September, 2005)
    • e-Portfolios at UBC (Full-day conference, UBC Robson Square, November, 2004)

 

 

 

 

Definitions

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Below are some definitions that speak to my notions of educational development and educational developer. These resonate with my values and what I strive to achieve through my work. Note: I use the terms educational developer, faculty developer and academic developer interchangeably.
word
Educational development: “The profession dedicated to helping colleges and universities function effectively as teaching and learning communities.” (Felten, Kalish, Pingree, & Plank, 2007, p.93)

Educational developer: “…an academic developer is any person who has a role in which they are explicitly expected to work with academics to assist them to reflect upon their academic role in relation to teaching, research, scholarship, leadership, funding applications and supervision of students. An academic developer may also work at a departmental/institutional level in a developmental role.” (Fraser, 1999, p. 90)

Note: In my opinion, academics include graduate students and staff who have a role in promoting teaching and learning, as well as faculty members.

References:
Felten, P., Kalish, A., Pingree, A., & Plank, K. (2007). Toward a scholarship of teaching and learning in educational development. In D. Robertson & L. Nilson (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty, Instructional and Organizational Development, Vol 25 (pp. 93–108). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Fraser, K. (1999). Australasian academic developers: Entry into the profession and our own professional development. International Journal for Academic Development, 4(2), 89-101.

Dissertation Research

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Below is a short description of my dissertation research, which I began in September 2007 and completed in June 2012.

Links:
– Iqbal Dissertation Summary 2012 (PDF, 6 page coloured newsletter format)
– Abstract (350 words)
– Download dissertation at: UBC’s Online Repository (cIRcle)

Dissertation Title

Faculty Members’ Professional Growth in Teaching Through the Summative Peer Review of Teaching and Other Departmental Practices

What

My dissertation research was a qualitative study in which I investigated faculty members’ understandings and experiences of the summative peer review of teaching and examined the relationship between summative peer review and professional growth in teaching. A second objective of this study was to explore departmental practices that support/hinder a culture that values teaching. To read an abstract of the dissertation, click here.

Why

I was drawn to the summative peer review of teaching because little research has examined the relationship between summative review and professional growth in teaching. This study will help identify the ways in which elements of academic culture affect Canadian faculty members’ understandings and experiences of the summative peer review of teaching.

How

For this study, I conducted 30 semi-structured in person interviews with pre-tenured faculty members and tenured faculty members at a research-intensive Canadian university. Participants were recruited from the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Arts; three departments in each faculty were represented in this study.

I used Atlas.ti to code and categorize the data and engaged in an ongoing process of analysis that began with the first interview and continued as I drafted and revised the dissertation.

Theoretical Framework

In this project, I employed and studied the concept of academic culture. I take culture to be a pattern of shared beliefs, values, and underlying assumptions that are displayed in attitudes, behavioural norms, rituals, and other symbolic activities (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2008; Bunch, 2007; Quinlan & Åkerlind, 2000; Trowler, 2008). I presume culture to be dynamic, diverse, and tied to broader societal, historical, and political contexts.

My work was informed by existing research on institutional, departmental and disciplinary cultures. I was also inspired by (and made extensive use of) O’Meara, Terosky and Neumann’s (2008) framework for professional growth in faculty careers.

Executive summary

I created an 6-page, coloured newsletter as the executive summary of dissertation. See Iqbal Dissertation Summary 2012.

Supervisory Committee 

Dr. Thomas Sork, Senior Associate Dean, Faculty of Education, UBC (co-supervisor)

Dr. Gary Poole, School of Population and Public Health (co-supervisor)

Dr. Amy Metcalfe, Educational Studies (committee member)

Dissertation Abstract

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Faculty Members’ Professional Growth in Teaching Through the Summative Peer Review of Teaching and Other Departmental Practices

This study investigated the ways that summative peer review of teaching contributes to tenure-track faculty members’ professional growth in teaching. It also explored other practices that support or hinder a departmental culture that values teaching.

Using the lens of academic culture, I drew on literature about the peer review of teaching, department culture, and professional growth in academic careers to inform this research. Thirty tenure-track faculty members from six departments and two faculties participated in semi-structured qualitative interviews. Participants were asked about their experiences of summative peer review, how they understood the relationship between peer review and their growth as instructors, and departmental practices that contribute to a culture that values teaching.

Participants had varied and inconsistent experiences of summative peer review of teaching. They reported multiple purposes (evaluative, formative, supplement to the student evaluations of teaching) that frequently conflicted. With few known guidelines that direct peer reviews and insufficient clarity as to their purpose, faculty members conducted summative reviews based on a personal sense of “what was best.” Given the demanding nature of academic careers and an institutional reward system that favours research over teaching, peer reviews were primarily limited to classroom observations and engaged few faculty members in dialogue. Such summative peer reviews appeared to make minimal contribution to professional growth in teaching.

The study did find numerous other departmental practices conducive to a culture that values teaching, i.e., informal collegial conversations about teaching and team teaching. Faculty members who partook in these grew as instructors. Results demonstrated that academic values and norms (i.e., collegiality and autonomy), disciplinary traditions pertaining to collaboration, and institutional rewards influenced how faculty members pursued professional growth as teachers.

Workshops Facilitated

facilitation, ISW, ISW Facilitated, Workshops facilitated,

Dec 2023: Eeeks, I haven’t updated this page in about 10 years! I’ll get around to that eventually!!

 

This section of my portfolio lists some of my facilitation activities; I have divided these into Facilitative Teaching and Facilitation.

Facilitative Teaching

In my educational developer role, I have the pleasure of facilitating a variety of workshops. As a workshop facilitator, I generally take on the role of facilitative teaching. In facilitative teaching, the “teacher” has the content knowledge that she wants  learners to know (or the behaviours she wishes to help the learners change). She recognizes this but assumes she is not the only expert in the room; therefore, she uses the learners ideas and experience in her teaching. In facilitative teaching, the teacher guides the learning by presenting complex problems, cases, projects, or situations in order to help learners construct meaning and come to an understanding of important ideas and processes (Wiggins & McTighe, 2007; Nelson, 2009).

Workshops I have facilitated include (in alphabetical order):

  • Classroom Assessment Techniques: This 1-2 hour session focuses on helping instructors learn about, and design, formative assessment methods.
  • Course Design Intensive (CDI): In this 3-day workshop, participants work individually and collaboratively to design or re-design a course that they  teach or are planning to teach. Feedback from participants indicates that the CDI is extremely helpful for learning about alignment, learner-centered approaches, and backward design:

    “Thanks a lot for the excellent workshop you and your colleagues facilitated last week. It was truly amazing!” – Participant (December 2016)

  • Developing Your Skills as Peer Reviewer of Teaching: a four-hour experiential workshop to help individual gain skills and knowledge applicable in peer review of teaching situations. Participants are instructors and teaching assistants who come from different Faculties across UBC; we have also been invited to offer the workshop at the University of Northern BC and Douglas College. Co-facilitated with CTLT colleagues many times since 2009.
  • Educational Developers Portfolio: In 2016, Judy Chan and I co-facilitated a webinar titled “The Educational Developers Portfolio: Possibilities, Purposes and Preparation” for the Educational Developers’ Caucus. In 2017, I collaborated with Drs. Dawson, McDonald, and Chan to co-design and co-facilitate the first EDC Institute on the Educational Developers portfolio (see here, in “Past Institute” section)
  • Effective Team Presentations: a 1.5 hour workshop for graduate students who are working, in teams, to create and make a team presentation.
  • Feedback-related Workshops: I have facilitated a number of workshops on giving and receiving feedback. Some of these were short workshops for graduate students. Others included:
    • Feedback workshop for PharmD students: This workshop is geared at enhancing feedback communication between PharmD students and their preceptors. The workshop activities engage the students in role-playing, brainstorming, discussion and script writing. Co-facilitated with Gary Poole since 2010. For photos and lesson plan, see here.
    • Feedback workshop for preceptors (of PharmD students and Residents): Workshop aimed at enhancing preceptors’ abilities to give and respond to feedback from students in the PharmD program or Residents. Offered November 22, 2013 (co-facilitated with Gary Poole, 3 hours).
  • For New Educational Developers: Full-day workshop offered at the Festival of Learning in 2016. Co-facilitated with: Jennifer Jasper (Justice Institute of BC) and Eric Kristensen (Retired educational developer).
  • Instructional Skills Workshops (see here).
  • Learning Outcomes: a 1-3 hour session designed to teach learning outcomes basics.
  • Learner-Centered Syllabus: 1-3 hour session designed to help instructors develop a learner-centered syllabus.
  • Peer Coaching for Graduate Students: a half day workshop for graduate students interested in building their skills as peer coaches.
  • Presentation Skills Workshop for Graduate Students: a 2-day workshop geared at enhancing presentation skills. 
  • Reflecting on Feedback on your Teaching: a 3-hour workshop on the use of reflection and feedback to improve teaching.
  • Teaching Portfolio Workshops: Topics have ranged from “how-to” seminars to help people use technology to build their own portfolios to the use of reflection in portfolios.  Most recently (December 2016), I co-facilitated a session titled “Using Your Teaching Portfolio to Showcase Your Educational Leadership” with Simon Albon and Simon Bates.  Sample feedback:
    “Thanks for facilitating such a helpful workshop!” – Faculty member, Faculty of Applied Science

    “Thanks to all of you for a very interesting and informative session…Sessions like the one you offered on Tuesday are very helpful to me as I try to orient myself to all these new developments and directions on campus.” – Faculty member, School of Music

  • TA Mentorship: a full day workshop for graduate students who are coordinating TA (teaching) mentorship programs in their departments and mentoring graduate students on teaching. Co-facilitated with Joseph Topornycky. (Workshop offered twice in August 2011 and again in September 2012).

Facilitation

“Group facilitation is a process in which a person, whose selection is acceptable to all members of the group, is substantively neutral,  and has no decision-making authority, diagnoses and intervenes to help a group improve how it identifies and solves problems and makes decisions, to increase the group’s effectiveness.” – Roger Schwarz

I distinguish facilitation from facilitative teaching because, in the latter, the facilitator has content expertise and purposefully works with learners to help them come to an understanding of specific and important ideas and processes.

Below, in reverse chronological order, are sessions I facilitated:

  • Characteristics of the Ideal Graduate. As part of an overall curriculum renewal process, Allyson Rayner and I co-facilitated a 3-hour working session with course co-ordinators and section leads from the Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Sciences, to help them articulate about characteristics of the ideal graduate. March 4, 2016.
  • Communication Skills for Health Science Professionals. On October 20, 2014, I was part of a facilitation team for a wonderful event for Audiology and Speech Language Pathology students.  This event involved professional actors who were acting out complex scenarios in which communication played a central piece. Students interacted with the actors in these situations.  My role was to facilitate the process, including the debrief.
  • Strategic Planning for OESD (Mission, Vision, Values). In May, 2013, I facilitated the development of a new mission statement for the OESD.  This process continued–slowly–until I left the OESD in April 2015. 
  • Cross-Professionals Collaboration. (Centre for Health Education Scholarship). In July, 2013, I facilitated an Historical Scan and Focused Conversation for seven members of a committee who had been working on a cross-professionals initiative for a number of years.  The purpose of the session was to reflect on what the group had learned so far and begin to plan for the future (this latter part was facilitated by Deborah Butler).  Deb, Glenn Regehr, Sarah Dobson and I worked closely together to plan this session.
  • Curriculum Retreat for new Entry to Practice PharmD Program. (Pharmaceutical Sciences). On June 20, 2013, Janice Johnson and I co-facilitated a curriculum retreat for the Faculty to assist members (approximately 60 participated) learn more about, and contribute their ideas to, the development of the new Entry-to-Practice PharmD program.

Photo credit: The colors of autumn by Susanne Nilsson (CC BY)